Tanking and Healing Prince the easy way

The Prince engagement is a royal pain in the ass (excuse the pun). A lot of players have difficulty with the randomness. It’s an extra variable that causes unneeded stress and can force the most disciplined of teams to lose focus and scatter Aside from his Enfeeble and Shadownova’s, the boss would be an easy takedown. It’s the damned Infernals which throw everything into disarray. After pugging with a few groups, I’m amazed to still see people attempt to do it how it was meant to be done: running around aimlessly.

But wait! What if I could guarantee you that I could take his Infernal’s out of play entirely? That you would no longer have to worry about Infernal’s affecting your main tank and raid? That would certainly make the fight all that much easier, wouldn’t it?

You know that the Infernal’s AOE strikes deal damage in a circular fashion. The platform is a square (kinda) with a few odd cracks along the sides. If you can position the tanks and the raid into such a position, then you would be free from the random variables being thrown at you.

Placement

I’m sure many of you are already aware of the Prince’s M.O. (Modus operandi), therefore I won’t comment too much about that. If you examine the various screns littered throughout the post, it should give you a rough idea of were to position yourself and the raid to avoid infernals. When you’re running into the room, the raid stands on the far left wall with the tank placed further up. You’ll need to wiggle and adjust a bit until you can find that sweet spot.

Might take you a wipe or two to get it.

If you have unfortunate cases where an Infernal lands between the MT and the raid, your melee guys are to fallback to the rest of the group and sit out for the fight until the Infernal’s gone. Have them throw knives or bandage or something. But whatever they do, ensure they pull back. There is a small margin of error in this positioning. As healers, too close against the wall means you do not have line of sight with the tank. Too far out puts within range of Infernals. If your tank can find the spot and your raid can get to the right location, you will take no damage from Infernals whatsoever and will not be required to move.

Healing

Phase one is a walk over. I advise you to put a Paladin on Dispel duty. You want to conserve your mana for more important parts of the fight later. Maintain your hots at all times. Refresh them when necessary as soon as the last tick hits. The moment you go into Phase 2, coldowns should be blown. This needs to be the fastest 60% -> 30% takedown ever. I have seen cases where tanks can eat 20000 damage within seconds.

Overheals are important. Do it. When you get down to 70% mana, use your shadowfiend. Mana potions need to be used to help supplement when necessary. Don’t go into each encounter with less then 4 mana potions (I blow no more than 3). The most important thing is to get out of phase 2 as fast possible. You’re still going to have Infernals drop on you, but they should not be damaging you.

Once you push into phase 3, ease off the gas pedal for a little bit because the worse part is over. With Prince’s damage output back to phase 1 levels, there isn’t the feeling of panic or terror. However, his axes start chopping away at your raid team. Assuming your team consists of three healers, ensure that you have at least two people on the MT and one healer on the raid. Ideally, the axes healer will be the person with the lowest amount of mana greater than zero (a healer with no mana is generally useless). The axes don’t deal a lot of damage, so it should be no problem for healers with 10% – 20% mana in THEIR gas tank.

The most crucial change listed is your tanking position. With the Infernal’s out of play, then running around the room is no longer required. Rinse, repeat, acquire phat loot.

On another note, I met another girl today in real life who plays WoW. Go figure. Addenum: I found a map which displays what I’m talking about perfectly. Courtesy of flavaguild.com.